Oceanside commission to avoid 'canyonization' in neighborhoods

OCEANSIDE  After a third hearing at a Planning Commission meeting in recent months, an Oceanside family will not be allowed to enclose a balcony at its home on South Pacific Street.

The commission split 4-3 to reject the project after a majority of commissioners said enclosing the balcony could set a precedent allowing “canyonization” of city neighborhoods.

If multistory homes on both sides of a street were allowed to enclose their balconies to make them part of the home’s interior, the street could become a canyon-like corridor, they said.

Commissioners Dennis Martinek, Louise Balma, Claudia Troisi and Jay Scrivener rejected the South Pacific Street project while Tom Rosales, Robert Ross and Robert Neal voted to allow the balcony to be covered.

Several commissioners said they would like guidance either from city zoning regulations, which are silent on the issue of canyonization, or from the City Council.

“All of a sudden we’ve got everybody pushed to the street, and how do we stop this?” Balma said. “We don’t have guidelines.”

In denying resident John MacDonald’s project, the commission paved the way for an appeal to the City Council, which MacDonald’s agent Jeff Winders said they planned to do. The commission has traditionally not denied such projects due to canyonization, even if that resulted in walls of homes close to streets.

“At some point in time we’re going to have to say to somebody, ‘No, you cannot have this, and no, this is not what we want,’ ” Scrivener said.

Some, such as Neal, agreed but felt it was unfair to the applicants to reverse course on a project that has been in the works for a while.